Cruithne - Asteroid 3753

Introduction

What is so
remarkable about Cruithne? There are many thousands of asteroids in orbit
around the Sun, ranging in size from small spherical planetoids a few hundred
miles in diameter to tiny and irregular lumps of rock.

The first
asteroids were discovered 200 years ago, and they moved around the Sun in orbits
between those of Mars and Jupiter.

Soon after Pluto
was discovered in 1930, a debate started over whether Pluto was really a planet,
or a satellite of Neptune that had managed to escape.

Meanwhile some
asteroids had been found to possess orbits that passed beyond that of Jupiter,
while others came well inside the orbit of Mars.

Chiron, orbiting
in the region of Saturn and Uranus was discovered in 1977, and during the last
decade or so, a host of small bodies called transneptunian objects have been
discovered. As their name suggests, they lie in the outer reaches of the
known solar system.

Attention has
also been drawn to so-called Near Earth Asteroids, which sometimes pass - you've
guessed it - fairly near to the Earth. Cruithne is one such asteroid.

Cruithne -
Astronomy

Cruithne is about
three miles in diameter and it moves in a path that takes it from outside the
orbit of Mars towards the orbit of Mercury. Cruithne takes almost exactly
the time to go round the Sun as the Earth. Cruinthe's rapid motion when it
is close to Mercury's orbit is compensated by its slow motion when it lies
beyond the orbit of Mars.

I have provided
some very good links at the bottom of this page, and these give detailed
accounts of Cruinthe's motion, with diagrams and simulations, and an Ephemeris
link. Essentially the interaction between Cruithne and the inner planets
leads to a complex cycle of movements over a period of about 770 years.
For example, Cruithne did not spend any time in the signs Cancer through
Scorpio between the early 19th century and 1994.

Cruithne -
Astrology

I have searched
for information regarding the astrological significance of Cruithne, (if indeed
there is any!), without any success.

There are several
possible ways to begin to understand the Astrology of a planet, asteroid, house
cusp or whatever.

Some methods that
come to mind are as follows:

(1). Read
what others have already written - not a possible option for me at present.

(2). Check
out a lot of charts, and relate character or events to Cruithne's placement by
sign, house and aspect - this will be time-consuming!

(3). Look
at the Mythology. This is a perfectly viable way of proceeding, and I have
provided a couple of links for those who are interested in pursuing this
line. Mythology is not my strong suit :-)

(4). Look
at the Astronomy. This approach is useful. For example, some of the
differences between the meanings of the inner planets and the outer planets can be
understood in terms of their orbital periods, even if some astrologers go too
far by suggesting that the effects of Uranus, Neptune and Pluto are
"only" generational!

Cruithne can make
reasonably close approaches to Mars, Earth, Venus and Mercury. Fortunately
the orbit of Cruithne is inclined by about 20 degrees, so collisions are
unlikely - at least according to its orbit as understood at present. Just
as some astrologers see Chiron as a link between Saturn and Uranus, Cruithne
could be seen as a link between the four terrestrial planets.

Some sources
refer to Cruithne as Earth's second moon. I feel that this is
misleading. Cruithne is much more like a tiny sister to the Earth,
orbiting the Sun with much the same period. Perturbations by the inner
planets make its orbit change in size over hundreds of years, but these
fluctuations appear to be periodic, the result being a complicated dance of
Earth and Cruithne round the Sun, rather than Cruithne orbiting the earth in any
meaningful way.

Neptune and Pluto
appear to be locked into a pattern where Pluto completes two orbits for every
three orbits of Neptune, conjunctions occurring every 492 years. At times Pluto
is closer to the Sun than Neptune. Nobody knows whether this resonance is
stable in the long term, but it would be rather surprising to me if this
arrangement were to be a very temporary one.

While some
astronomers believe that the asteroids originate from a planet that broke up
into small pieces, perhaps due to the presence of the massive Jupiter, most
authorities currently suggest that Jupiter's mass prevented a planet from
forming in the first place in the region between Mars and Jupiter.

So how does all
of this
relate to Astrology?

Although Carl
Jung has been widely associated with Astrology, partly because of his own
interest in the subject and partly because his four functions, (Intuition,
Sensation, Thinking and Feeling), fit in rather nicely with the four
astrological elements of Fire, Earth, Air and Water, that is no reason not to
call upon the work of Sigmund Freud, and his threefold division of the psyche
into the Id, the Ego and the Superego.

If the signs are
taken in groups of four, my belief is that the Id corresponds to Aries, Taurus,
Gemini and Cancer. The Ego corresponds to Leo, Virgo, Libra and Scorpio,
while the Superego is associated with Sagittarius, Capricorn, Aquarius and
Pisces.

The Superego
signs are ruled by the "gas giants", Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and
Neptune.

The Ego signs are
ruled by the Sun and the three other "terrestrial" planets Mercury,
Venus and Mars.

The rulership of
the Id signs is controversial, but most astrologers would accept that the Moon
rules Cancer, and there is some support for my belief that Pluto rules
Aries. I regard the Earth as ruler of Taurus, and a transplutonian planet,
(Tobey's Planet Z), as ruler of Gemini.

Each planet and
sign can be associated with a Freudian division of the Psyche and a Jungian
function. To take a non-controversial example, Jupiter and Sagittarius are
associated with Superego Intuition.

Now suppose that
the Id signs, the Ego signs and the Superego signs are separated not only
conceptually, but also astronomically. Is there, in a sense, some sort of
astronomical discontinuity at 0 Aries, 0 Leo and 0 Sagittarius?

Well there is a
relatively large gap between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter, (rulers of Scorpio
and Sagittarius), and as we have seen, current thinking is that no fully-fledged
planet was allowed to form in that space. We have (most of) the asteroids
instead.

Again there is a
discontinuity between Pisces and Aries, in the sense that there is an overlap in
the orbits of their ruling planets, Neptune and Pluto. Sometimes Pluto is
closer to the Sun, (and to the Earth), than Neptune. Could the years when
Pluto is closer than Neptune provide a seeding time for a new cycle, an end
becoming a beginning, as it were?

What about Cancer
and Leo? Is there any unusual relationship between the Moon and the Sun,
(in the sense of a gap or an overlap, or other discontinuity)?

Well, for people
on Earth, the answer is maybe. From a geocentric point of view, the four
closest planets orbiting the centre of the solar system, the barycentre, are the
Sun, Mercury, Venus and Mars, (the Ego planets), followed by the gas giants,
(the Superego planets). The Id planets are a mixture of the two most
distant planets and the Earth on which we stand, and the Moon which orbits the
Earth, rather than the Sun.

So how about
Cruithne as a metaphorical boundary between the Id and the Ego? Its
convoluted 770 year cycle easily exceeds the 492 year Neptune-Pluto cycle.
Yet in other ways Cruithne is astrologically very close. It can zip
through several signs in one day(!) when it passes near to the south ecliptic
pole, as it did in November 1995.

As to how to
interpret Cruithne in a chart, my tentative suggestion is that it might behave
astrologically as a messenger between all the terrestrial planets, helping to
integrate the conscious ego energies of Mercury, Venus and Mars with the solar
energy and literally bring these down to Earth, through the Ascendant, (or
through the Equal House 4th Cusp, for those purists who put the centre of the
Earth in the chart). When working well, Cruithne might help to ensure
alignment of the expression of the Ego energies with the expression of the
Ascendant.

Cruithne by
aspects, sign and house would indicate the best way of going about this task.

I would certainly
be interested to hear of other's experience with Cruithne. My early
research suggests some interesting connections between Cruithne's position in
the charts of family members, which would make sense.